Advise the CFL

[BigBlue]

The annual CFL meetings will be upon us in a few weeks. Every year they tinker, trying to improve our game. Change is for the better, right? A rule change here, a regulation there, an administrative move here and another there.

What would you suggest to our CFL brass? Rule changes, things to avoid or shut down.... What would genuinely make our game more satisfying & exciting?

[SpeedFlex27]

Get rid of the incidental contact after 5 yards. Amend the PI rules so it's not touch football.  Both the receiver & defender have the right to the football so call it that way.  Get rid of the coaches challenge except for blatant PI on both sides of the football only on the receiver or DB the ball was thrown to. No more fishing expeditions by coaches like Wally or Jason Maas looking for penalties somewhere else on the field. No more RTP challenges or whatever stupid situations coaches are allowed to challenge now. Limit the coaches challenge to one call only per half with no rewards of letting them have another if successful. Give the coaches team who unsuccessfully challenges a 15 yard penalty & a loss of down.

Edited January 13, 2017 by SpeedFlex27

[Floyd]

6 hours ago, SpeedFlex27 said:

Get rid of the incidental contact after 5 yards. Amend the PI rules so it's not touch football.  Both the receiver & defender have the right to the football so call it that way.  Get rid of the coaches challenge except for blatant PI on both sides of the football only on the receiver or DB the ball was thrown to. No more fishing expeditions by coaches like Wally or Jason Maas looking for penalties somewhere else on the field. No more RTP challenges or whatever stupid situations coaches are allowed to challenge now. Limit the coaches challenge to one call only per half with no rewards of letting them have another if successful. Give the coaches team who unsuccessfully challenges a 15 yard penalty & a loss of down.

Bit extreme...  don't mind watching challenges if they are actually relevant to the play

Could do this as a 'delay of game penalty' if the challenge is unrelated to the play or frivolous... but more stuff for refs to think about is a bit scary.

I also think the league needs to be clear about roughing the passer/head shots...  some games it feels like bumping the passer calls

Get rid of the ST illegal blocking calls that are not relevant to the return - those are ridiculous...  I would even loosen the definition of illegal block (really has to be blatantly from behind) to encourage more kick return yardage

[Jacquie]

1 hour ago, Floyd said:

I also think the league needs to be clear about roughing the passer/head shots...  some games it feels like bumping the passer calls

They already are clear. No contact above the shoulders or below the knees is a penalty. It doesn't get much clearer.

[wbbfan]

please please please please let them revert these awful PI calls. Speed up the review process. If they do that, and dont do any thing too crazy it would be great. They have changed the game soo much in the past fist full of years it would be really nice to just have some small changes and tweaks. rather then whole sale change. 

[Bigblue204]

Didn't we already go over this in another thread?

[Atomic]

Get rid of PI challenges

[BigBlue]

I would like to see a change in scheduling philosophy ... there is a game or two  discretion in who plays who ... I would like to see the weaker teams play that extra game against another weaker team ... likewise stronger against stronger record from previous year ... NFL has a policy like this I believe

In terms of scheduling I would also like to see the final month of the schedule be as exclusively as possible teams against other teams in their own division

Finally, I would like to see the first  three or four games of the season against teams of very similar record, first cross division then same division ... this balances the league and gives the weaker teams some semblance of hope

There are many idiosyncracies in the scheduling but lets let the computer generate multiple alternatives ... whoever has been doing the scheduling so far appears either insane or partisan

Edited January 13, 2017 by BigBlue

[Goalie]

It's a 9 team league.  It's not a 32 team league. The worst team last year could be one of the better ones this year 

[SpeedFlex27]

10 hours ago, Jacquie said:

They already are clear. No contact above the shoulders or below the knees is a penalty. It doesn't get much clearer.

You're taking about officials here so yes, it's unclear.

[BigBlue]

22 minutes ago, Goalie said:

It's a 9 team league.  It's not a 32 team league. The worst team last year could be one of the better ones this year 

9 vs 32 is irrelevant ... match lower against lower & higher/higher

[holoman]

I like the Illegal contact rule.....Get rid of it being review able though. 

[HardCoreBlue]

Immediately after a play is whistled, a coach has 20 seconds to decide whether he wants to challenge the call.

After twenty seconds elapses, that play can't be challenged. 

[WBBFanWest]

Challenges - unlimited  1st wrong one costs a time out. 2nd and subsequent delay of game.  Review official can take a maximum of 30 seconds to overturn, otherwise the call on the field stands.  

[Rich]

I don't like this idea of tailoring the schedule to match lower teams against lower teams and higher teams against higher teams.

It is manufactured parity and it rewards teams for for being bad and penalises teams for being good.   Divisions aren't completely equitable either but the cross over was put in to compensate for that.

If you really want this type of system, you need a "premier" league and lower level leagues and you get promoted / demoted  after a season.  At least then can't get some team who got an easier ride because they sucked last year, make it into the playoffs because of that, get hot at the right time and win a championship.  

However, the promotion / demotion concept won't work with a 9 team league.

[Engelwood]

I think making it so slow motion can only be used to determine if a receiver was out of bounds, if the ball was fumbled and for the spot of the ball not for PI, it should have to be decided through live action speed because so much can be called PI through slowing it down frame by frame.

[WBBFanWest]

28 minutes ago, Rich said:

I don't like this idea of tailoring the schedule to match lower teams against lower teams and higher teams against higher teams.

It is manufactured parity and it rewards teams for for being bad and penalises teams for being good.   Divisions aren't completely equitable either but the cross over was put in to compensate for that.

If you really want this type of system, you need a "premier" league and lower level leagues and you get promoted / demoted  after a season.  At least then can't get some team who got an easier ride because they sucked last year, make it into the playoffs because of that, get hot at the right time and win a championship.  

However, the promotion / demotion concept won't work with a 9 team league.

Actually, what I would do is have all teams play against each other for a set number of games, say, oh... 18 or so.  Then compare records of all the teams.  Those at the bottom get eliminated, while the ones with the best records progress onto some sort of "mini-season" in order to determine the league champion.  That way, you end up with the stronger teams playing the stronger teams.  I could really see something like this working well.  

[Goalie]

Ottawa had a losing record and are grey cup Champs. 

[BigBlue]

On 1/13/2017 at 1:17 PM, Rich said:

I don't like this idea of tailoring the schedule to match lower teams against lower teams and higher teams against higher teams.

It is manufactured parity and it rewards teams for for being bad and penalises teams for being good.   Divisions aren't completely equitable either but the cross over was put in to compensate for that.

If you really want this type of system, you need a "premier" league and lower level leagues and you get promoted / demoted  after a season.  At least then can't get some team who got an easier ride because they sucked last year, make it into the playoffs because of that, get hot at the right time and win a championship.  

However, the promotion / demotion concept won't work with a 9 team league.

You may not like it Rich but it is what the NFL does .... and is "manuacturing parity" a bad thing ? Especially if your club is at the low end any  particuliar year .... and does it not put a few more bums in the stands when you have a chance at the beginning of the season instead of facing a crushing set of foes?

Why you don;t like it I have no idea  but perhaps you hate  manufacturing .... and how could you create a premier league in the cfl ... you want to integrate college and junior clubs

Edited January 14, 2017 by BigBlue

[Rich]

1 hour ago, BigBlue said:

You may not like it Rich but it is what the NFL does .... and is "manuacturing parity" a bad thing ? Especially if your club is at the low end any  particuliar year .... and does it not put a few more bums in the stands when you have a chance at the beginning of the season instead of facing a crushing set of foes?

Why you don;t like it I have no idea  but perhaps you hate  manufacturing .... and how could you create a premier league in the cfl ... you want to integrate college and junior clubs

I said the idea of a premier league wouldn't work in the CFL, but it is the only way tailoring a schedule based on records makes sense to me for as sports league.

And we don't have to do it just because the NFL does it.  There are lots of things the NFL does, that we do.  Especially when they need to come up with a way for a schedule to work for a 32 team league who only play 16 games each, and still weight game play within conference for playoff rankings to work.   Every team can't play each other every year already.   We don't have that problem in the CFL.   We can make everyone play each other in a more equitable way.

I don't like manufactured parity because I think it is ridiculous.  I thought I was pretty clear in my original post on why I didn't like it:

Quote

It is manufactured parity and it rewards teams for for being bad and penalises teams for being good.   Divisions aren't completely equitable either but the cross over was put in to compensate for that.

This is professional sports.  It is not everyone gets a participation medal sports.  If you want a better record, put together a better team and earn it.

[WBBFanWest]

For me, there is a very straightforward answer to "The NFL does it."  Want to guess what it is?

[Jacquie]

5 hours ago, WBBFanWest said:

For me, there is a very straightforward answer to "The NFL does it."  Want to guess what it is?

I'd take a guess but it wouldn't get through the forum bad language filter. 

[BigBlue]

23 hours ago, Rich said:

 

"And we don't have to do it just because the NFL does it.  There are lots of things the NFL does, that we do.  ...  We can make everyone play each other in a more equitable way."

EACH WESTERN TEAM PLAYS THE EAST TWICE (2 X 4 = 8) AND HAS 10 GAMES AGAINST 4 TEAMS IN THE WEST  SO PLAY 2 TEAMS TWICE AND 3 TEAMS THRICE (2+2+3+3=10) ... YOU SAY "We can make everyone play each other in a more equitable way. THERE ARE TWO DISCRETION GAMES EACH YEAR (ITS SIMILAR FOR THE EAST) .... HOW IS THIS: "I don't like manufactured parity because I think it is ridiculous. " I DON'T KNOW WHY STANDINGS MATCHING IS RIDIICULOUS BECAUSE YOU HAVEN'T SAID .... BUT MAYBE YOU WOULD LIKE TO REVERSE THE EQUALIZATION METHODS AS IN WAIVER ORDER OR DRAFT ORDER TO HAVE THE STRONGER TEAMS HAVE PRIORITY BECAUSE THEY HAVE EARNED IT. EVERY LEAGUE WORKS ITS RULES TO ESTABLISH PARITY AMONGST THE TEAMS AS BEST THEY CAN HELP ... "If you want a better record, put together a better team and earn it." THATS WHY THERE IS A CAP & EQUALIZATION METHODS ... TO END DOMINANCE AND GIVE DEVELOPING TEAMS A CHANCE AT CONFIIDENCE. AND MORE IMPORTANTLY  TO GIVE THE LOWER HALF OF THE LEAGUE SOME FUN AND SOME HOPE BECAUSE THE SCHEDULE ISN'T RIDICULOUS.  PARTICIPATION METALS HAVE ZERO TO DO WITH ANY OF THIS

 

 

 

[BigBlue]

We need to implement offensive pass interference ... its on the books but rarely called ... watching the NFL you see it called frequently, as often as warranted ... up here its always the DBs fault almost never the receivers fault

[bearpants]

On 1/13/2017 at 1:56 PM, WBBFanWest said:

Actually, what I would do is have all teams play against each other for a set number of games, say, oh... 18 or so.  Then compare records of all the teams.  Those at the bottom get eliminated, while the ones with the best records progress onto some sort of "mini-season" in order to determine the league champion.  That way, you end up with the stronger teams playing the stronger teams.  I could really see something like this working well.  

This will never work ....